“The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions—none more so than the most capable.”
Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XIII
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Theodore Dreiser 20
Novelist, journalist 1871–1945Related quotes

"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm
Context: Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very "uniqueness," "separateness" and "differentiation" make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.

Source: Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”
Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away
“Of all things difficult to rule, none were more so than my will and affections.”
Source: Passion and Purity